Government

Jerry Craig has been hired as Bedford County’s new tourism director.
Craig began work Monday and resigned his seat on the county’s planning commission at last night’s planning commission meeting. He has held the District 7 seat on the planning commission since 2012 and served
as the commission’s chairman this year.

Bedford Town Council received an update, last week, from the Bedford Regional Water Authority (BRWA).
BRWA’s director, Brian Key, told Town Council that work on the new Smith Mountain Lake water plant, which he said will provide Bedford with a redundant water source, is ahead of schedule. He expects design work to be completed this spring with a deadline of December, 2016 for completing the work.

Walt King could not be reached in time for his thoughts on the Nov. 4 Town Council election to be included in the Bulletin’s post election story. King got 597 votes, not enough to win a seat on council.
He later connected with the Bulletin through an email.
“I had wondered after elections how the people that do not get elected feel; some spending years and millions of dollars,” King stated.

Bedford County’s supervisors voted unanimously last week to approve $600,000 to complete the purchase of radios that will be compatible with the new regional radio system. The supervisors had earlier approved $1.5 million for initial purchases.

Ronnie Gross, of Gross’ Orchard, and Warren Radford, a partner in McCraw Auction Company, are teaming up to host a fundraiser to buy toys for children who won’t be getting much, if anything, for Christmas. The effort is called Toys for Kids.

According to Gross, Radford came up with the idea. Gross said Radford was looking for a way that he could use his talents as an auctioneer to give back to the community. The idea of raising money to buy toys came from Julie Hertig, a local teacher.

Democrat Senator Mark Warner will return to the Senate for another six years, but the election didn’t turn out the way pundits were calling it.
In late October, Warner was supposed to beat Ed Gillespie by 10 percentage points. Instead, Warner barely survived, defeating Gillespie by 1,073,033 votes to 1,055,622 — less than 1 percent. Robert Sarvis, a libertarian got 53,053 votes, accounting for 2.43 percent.

Several Town Council candidates offered their thoughts on the Nov. 4 election in phone interviews, following last Tuesday’s election.
The election saw new four-year terms go to Bedford Mayor Robert Wandrei, Vice Mayor James Vest and Councilman Steve Rush. Two year terms—in a contested election for four seats among six candidates—were won by Tim Black, Robert Carson, Stacey Hailey and Beckham Stanley.

“We’ve had higher turnout than we thought we would,” said Barbara Gunter, the county registrar. By 1:09 p.m, 24 percent of the county’s registered voters had cast ballots.
D. J. Ashwell, chief of the Blue Ridge Water Authority precinct, said they had 391 voters come through by 11:30 a.m. — more than he expected. At that point voter participation had already topped 20 percent at that precinct.